Issa is the sentimental favorite in the canons of Japanese Haiku. He used simple, even colloquial language, and he brought heartfelt love to all things he touched, great and small. Although he was not immersed in the heavier aspects of Zen, his lighthearted approach to life was well in accord with the latter clays of the Zen revival. His Haiku style seems the literary equivalent of the comic Zen drawings of Hakuin (1685—1768) or Sengai (1751-1837). There is also a Zen quality to his rejection of the literary conventions of the time. Yet Issa was not consciously a rebel; rather, he was a simple, sincere man who wrote sincerely of simple things. His approach to nature was as honest in its own way as Basho's, but Issa was happy to let his own personality and response shine through, while Basho deliberately circumvented his own emotions.
Orphaned at an early age and seeing to the grave all the children born during his lifetime (as well as two of his three wives), Issa seems to have known little but hardship. Much of his life was spent as an itinerant poet-priest, an occupation that allowed him to learn the life of the people while also keeping him close to the earth. A compendium of his life's experiences and a fine sampling of his Haiku were recorded in his famous book The Year of My Life, which seems to have been his answer to Basho's travel diaries. However, his humanity was far distant from Basho's lonely sabi. For condensed effect, compare the following with Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper."
Yabu-kage ya
In the thicket's shade,
tatta hitori-no
and all alone, she's singing—
ta-ue-uta
the rice-planting maid.13
Perhaps his most touching poem, which shames into oblivion all the "transient dew" posturing of a thousand years of classical Japanese verse, is the famous Haiku written on the death of one of his children.
Tsuyu-no-yo wa